The return of Sheldon Adelson

Sheldon Adelson is back on the market with talk of giving at least $1 million — and possibly much more — to the Mitt Romney-affiliated super PAC Restore Our Future, POLITICO has learned.

Romney sat down with the casino mogul for 45 minutes at his Venetian Resort in Las Vegas last week before Restore Our Future held a fundraiser there.

Story Continued Below

This week, Rudy Giuliani and veteran operative Arthur Finkelstein met with Adelson in New York to discuss the possibility of a new super PAC they’re considering starting to help the GOP capture the Senate.

Adelson’s affections — and his cash — have been in demand since the end of Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign, which was propped up by $21 million from his family. Also in the hunt: Karl Rove, who has been in periodic contact with Adelson, who reportedly committed to making a multimillion-dollar donation to either the nonprofit group Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies or its super PAC cousin American Crossroads.

The escalating race for Adelson’s cash is emblematic of a larger phenomenon that worries some Republicans — a subtle power struggle between some of the groups that together plan to spend $1 billion to try to defeat President Barack Obama and his Democratic congressional allies. The worry is that the proliferation of outside groups — each with their own advertising strategies and messages — and the fundraising competition between them could hamper ongoing efforts led by Rove to coordinate spending.

If all the groups are able to raise money and work together to divvy up races and responsibilities, “it can be a very powerful thing,” said Rick Tyler, a longtime Gingrich aide who helped run Winning Our Future, the pro-Gingrich super PAC funded with more than $21 million from Adelson’s family. “But if everybody sees it as you’re taking a piece of my pie and we’re not going to deal with you or work with you, then it’s just going to devolve into a money grubbing game. And that’s not going to get anybody elected or get the Republican Party going anywhere,” Tyler added, recalling that Romney supporters had urged Adelson to cut off his contributions to Winning Our Future.

The super PAC scramble could go a long way toward determining who emerges with top billing in the increasingly lucrative GOP outside game in 2013 and beyond. If Romney wins the White House, his closest allies will likely have a claim to preeminence, either by converting Restore Our Future to a permanent affiliate of the Romney political operation or by creating new groups or taking over existing ones. Any of the possibilities could threaten the dominance of Crossroads and Rove. The former political guru to George W. Bush, Rove since 2010 has remade himself as the unofficial leader of the extra-party infrastructure, facilitating regular meetings of GOP outside groups at Crossroads headquarters designed to keep them from bumping into one another on the electoral battlefield.

Big donor fundraising is largely about personal relationships. And, as the eight-figure tallies given to GOP outside advertising groups this year by Adelson and Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons demonstrate, those relationships have never been as important as they are now in the era of unlimited donations to super PACs and so-called 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups that focus on advertising.